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8 Juicy Scandals that Broke China’s Internet in 2018 (FBB and Kris Wu in Top 3)


Lexi.K

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2018 was truly the year of the scandal. Are scandals a constant, unavoidable part of today’s controversy-driven news cycle? Yes. Yes they are. But China in 2018 was thicc – like, very thicc. The entertainment industry was rocked by scandals, both newcomers and established heavy hitters.

 

Here are the top scandals that dominated the Chinese internet in 2018:

 

1. The One Where a Rapper was Shunned for Rapping About Things Rappers Rap About

Poor, poor PG One. The Xi’an rapper started out this year at the top of his game, earning the co-champion spot on the smash hit competition reality show “Rap of Chinaâ€. His future as a dominant force in China’s rapidly growing hip hop scene seemed written in stone.

 

And then, people started digging into his past. An old track of his resurfaced, with lyrics referencing “white powderâ€, “shameless bitchesâ€, sex, etc. If you’re a rapper, these subjects are all par for the course. But in China, and especially if you’re currently the country’s most visible rapper, in the midst of a tenuous “hip hop banâ€â€¦ it’s not a good look. Throw in the fact that a paparazzi caught a married actress staying the night at PG One’s house, and you’ve got a good ol’ fashioned scandal.

 

PG One was largely scrubbed from mainstream and social media, and the proud champion was forced to retreat into hiding. Apologies were of no use, and he became the poster child for the “hip hop is bad and we’re not allowed to engage with it†movement. Since then, he’s made a couple attempts to climb back into the ring, all of which were largely unsuccessful. Poor, poor PG One.

 

2. The One Where China’s Most Famous Actress Disappeared Overnight

As a fresh new star, PG One’s fall from grace hit hard. But if there’s one thing that hits harder, it’s the biggest actress in China (!) being exposed for fraud (!!) on social media, and straight up disappearing for months (!!!), Carmen Sandiego-style.

 

The storm started when infamous straight-talking TV presenter Cui Yongyuan published a photo to Weibo of Fan’s contract for the film Cell Phone 2, showing her payment of 10 million RMB (1.56 million USD) for just four days work. A big payday, but the real bombshell was a photo of a second contract, displaying Fan’s actual payout of 50 million RMB for the exact same job. The lower number was sent to the authorities, allowing Fan’s camp to sidestep a huge sum in taxes.

 

The “yin-yang†contract scandal blew up. Fan disappeared from the public eye for months (previously, she’d been absolutely inescapable, probably the only star to hold more product sponsorships than Kris Wu). Rumours circulated that she’d been arrested, or fled to the US as the, err, “unique traits†of parts of China’s “legal system†were laid bare. There can’t be be any countries in the world where such a huge star can simply “vanish†overnight. But authorities eventually came forward to charge her with nearly one billion RMB in fines for tax evasion.

 

Yikes. She issued a very grovelly apology via Weibo, but it seems Fan likely won’t be getting sponsorships for yogurt, or vacuum cleaners, or milk biscuits, or handbags, or vitamin supplements, or dish detergent, or air purifiers, anytime soon.

 

3. The One Where Team Ariana Grande Fired Shots at Kris Wu

Ah! Speaking of Kris Wu.

 

The K-pop star-turned-rapper had an eventful year, to say the least. Wu’s fame and status were cemented by his position as the lead judge on reality TV juggernaut Rap of China, which marched on into Season 2 in 2018, in spite of alleged hip hop bans. He also had an ear-splittingly bad raw vocal track leak, which thrust him into the center of an all-out “boys vs. girls†debate instigated by a basketball fan forum (still with us?).

 

Several rappers jumped in with

, leaving Wu to fight them off with a diss track of his own:

 

 

Now, after all that, we get to the real scandal and controversy. When Kris finally dropped his long-awaited debut album Antares, it inexplicably seized seven of the top ten spots on the US iTunes charts. That’s super fishy, considering the artist’s rate of recognition with US audiences is close to zero (or at least was prior to this scandal).

 

Maybe iTunes would have let that slide, but one person was not having it. And that one person was Ariana Grande. Well, more than one person — ostensibly it would’ve been Ariana’s whole team of lawyers, who were not pleased about Kris’ suspiciously strong performance edging Ariana’s new single thank u, next out of the number one spot.

 

Several conclusions were drawn, but to summarize: yes, it seems Kris’ mainland China fan base had conspired to artificially boost his US sales data. He was wiped from iTunes’ US charts altogether. The rapper once again became a trending topic on Weibo — but hey, for the first time, US fans started to care who he was, finally asking the question Kris Who?

 

_________________________

 

Read the other 5 at radiichina.com

 

Soooooo... it's 2018 China comparable to a 2014 South Korea?

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kris who


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I kinda like seeing people who think their celebrity holds them above the law get their own back. I get annoyed when people defend criminals purely because they're fans of them. 

As of PG One, it's true he got called out for "doing what rappers do" but just because it'd been common for rappers to be racists, sexist, homophobic etc in the past doesn't make it okay, it just means it was commonly accepted for raps to be racist/homophobe/sexist/bigot etc. which is basically what people are fighting against these days. I don't believe dragging someone's past out if they've taken the right path eventually and are now not being like that though. 

The whole iTunes thing was still suss, I still think AG's people did something for Chris's music to be completely taken down when it was beating her placing. But regardless it doesn't really matter. Chris' music got a crap tone of free media attention and so did AG so it worked out well for both of them. 

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The whole iTunes thing was still suss, I still think AG's people did something for Chris's music to be completely taken down when it was beating her placing. But regardless it doesn't really matter. Chris' music got a crap tone of free media attention and so did AG so it worked out well for both of them. 

 

 

Kris' music wasn't "completely taken down", he just dropped all the way to the bottom after iTunes filtered VPN sales. People say so because he just was nowhere to be seen in top positions.

 

More info here: variety.com

 

But you could make a point with Ariana Grande's team and fans doing something: they complained and iTunes investigated. When Kris blocked BTS from reaching #1 earlier this year, nobody paid attention to Armys (we now know they might have been right about it being adquired fradulently).

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Did you even follow their news or are you just giving an opinion piece with your version of what happened thrown in? You kind of missed the ACTUAL reason PG One got in the shit he''s in, Fan Bingbing is lucky her ass is not in jail right now when people who evade one tenth of the amount she got away with evading would be in jail not only in China, but in other countries as well. 

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I kinda like seeing people who think their celebrity holds them above the law get their own back. I get annoyed when people defend criminals purely because they're fans of them. 

 

As of PG One, it's true he got called out for "doing what rappers do" but just because it'd been common for rappers to be racists, sexist, homophobic etc in the past doesn't make it okay, it just means it was commonly accepted for raps to be racist/homophobe/sexist/bigot etc. which is basically what people are fighting against these days. I don't believe dragging someone's past out if they've taken the right path eventually and are now not being like that though. 

 

The whole iTunes thing was still suss, I still think AG's people did something for Chris's music to be completely taken down when it was beating her placing. But regardless it doesn't really matter. Chris' music got a crap tone of free media attention and so did AG so it worked out well for both of them. 

 

 

I one hundred percent agree with you. Many people doing bad things and most of them not got punished doesn't mean "I can do it as well and I shouldn't be punished either".

 

 

 

 

Did you even follow their news or are you just giving an opinion piece with your version of what happened thrown in? You kind of missed the ACTUAL reason PG One got in the shit he''s in, Fan Bingbing is lucky her ass is not in jail right now when people who evade one tenth of the amount she got away with evading would be in jail not only in China, but in other countries as well. 

 

Sooooo truedave.png

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Did you even follow their news or are you just giving an opinion piece with your version of what happened thrown in? You kind of missed the ACTUAL reason PG One got in the shit he''s in, Fan Bingbing is lucky her ass is not in jail right now when people who evade one tenth of the amount she got away with evading would be in jail not only in China, but in other countries as well. 

 

Oh yes, sis!

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Did you even follow their news or are you just giving an opinion piece with your version of what happened thrown in? You kind of missed the ACTUAL reason PG One got in the shit he''s in, Fan Bingbing is lucky her ass is not in jail right now when people who evade one tenth of the amount she got away with evading would be in jail not only in China, but in other countries as well. 

 

The article (which is not mine, I clearly linked to the source below), does state the reasons of PG One's downfall though: his alleged affair with a married actress and his past lyrical content. I really wonder what would be, according to you, the actual reason. The affair soiled his reputation considerably (not for nothing it was called the 'Last celebrity scandal of 2017' in China), but his lyrics were the last nail in the coffin. Otherwise, there would have been nothing the CYL, a wing of the ruling Communist Party of China, could publicly denounce (coincidentially, the CYL criticism happened shortly after the reveal of the supposed affair).

 

Also, the article never justified Fan Bingbing, it explained her situation. Besides, I wouldn't be so sure the jail thing. Tax evasion by celebrities is not a rare sight, and how many of them do you think they ever see the inside of a cell?

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The article (which is not mine, I clearly linked to the source below), does state the reasons of PG One's downfall though: his alleged affair with a married actress and his past lyrical content. I really wonder what would be, according to you, the actual reason. The affair soiled his reputation considerably (not for nothing it was called the 'Last celebrity scandal of 2017' in China), but his lyrics were the last nail in the coffin. Otherwise, there would have been nothing the CYL, a wing of the ruling Communist Party of China, could publicly denounce (coincidentially, the CYL criticism happened shortly after the reveal of the supposed affair).

 

Also, the article never justified Fan Bingbing, it explained her situation. Besides, I wouldn't be so sure the jail thing. Tax evasion by celebrities is not a rare sight, and how many of them do you think they ever see the inside of a cell?

 

Your source....no wonder

 

giphy.gif

 

probably written by some Shanghai sexpat douche who writes as his side gig

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Your source....no wonder

 

giphy.gif

 

probably written by some Shanghai sexpat douche who writes as his side gig

 

Ah, the sweet ad-hominem fallacy! Perfect for people that can't sustain their point other way.

 

Given that you haven't said which would be the actual reason (according to you, of course, because the summary of that article isn't proven wrong by every other source I visited), yet resort to flimsy, inflamatory statements (sexpat? really?) and fallacies, it seems you're not interested in a proper discusssion. Suit yourself then.

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Ah, the sweet ad-hominem fallacy! Perfect for people that can't sustain their point other way.

 

Given that you haven't said which would be the actual reason (according to you, of course, because the summary of that article isn't proven wrong by every other source I visited), yet resort to flimsy, inflamatory statements (sexpat? really?) and fallacies, it seems you're not interested in a proper discusssion. Suit yourself then.

 

I hope you realize this sooner than later that you are not in the right forum for that.

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